Our friends at the Traverse Theatre have conducted an interview with 2026 IASH/Traverse Creative Fellow Jack MacGregor, which you can read in full on their website.
What compels you as a writer?
I really think that plays are meant to be exciting to watch and that theatre in general is meant to be cool and if it’s not doing those things then we’re in trouble. Besides that, any writer is going to feel compelled to write for the times they live in, and this is an inescapable responsibility. I like to imagine each of my plays so far as essentially history plays of the 2020s - that my role when writing drama is to articulate the increasingly violent contradictions that define our world today.
When I write about Scotland I position my writing beneath the veneer of the familiar, within a literary genre I half-jokingly describe as “Deep Scotland”. Basically tapping into the unarticulated landscapes and personalities that appear in the edges of the country, estranged from any prevailing national narrative, the bits that don’t mesh with any of the mainstream stories we tell about ourselves. Usually this means through a different lens of geography, class, and sexuality. Taking our strange country and tilting it on its side, making it feel new and unfamiliar. Anything that is trying to re-examine or tap into aspects of contemporary Scotland that are underrepresented or underappreciated. Sometimes I’ll be out with friends and annoy everyone by coming out with different places that feel like Deep Scotland: “the Cromarty oil rigs”... “RAF Lossiemouth”... “the Auchengeich Miners Memorial”... “Livi Skate Park”... So Deep Scotland. Writers don’t create ‘Deep Scotland’ - it already exists in the world, we just need to recognise and tap into it.
A very incomplete list of plays that fit this category: Fibres by former IASH fellow Frances Poet (which played at the Traverse in October 2019), Gagarin Way by Gregory Burke (which premiered at the Traverse in July 2001), Lost at Sea by Morna Young, Passing Places by Stephen Greenhorn (which premiered at the Traverse in April 1997), and Mouthpiece by Kieran Hurley (which premiered at the Traverse in December 2018). I could list many more but those all feel like super real expressions of this pretendy genre. Play the game yourself. Start pointing it out. It’s ridiculously fun.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given as a writer?
Paraphrasing something from Oliver Emanuel: you should always write what you want to, even if it’s weird, even if it makes you scared, or you think you’ll fail, because someone else out there is going to love it. Your writing won’t be for everyone - but it is for someone. The words just need to find them.
That advice kind of changed my life. It certainly changed my writing. It taught me that being distinct is a quality all on its own. In an age of AI slop it’s never been more important to lean into the imperfect human quirks of our own style, that stuff makes each writer special.
Read all 10 of Jack's responses on the Traverse Theatre's website.